Processing facilities are typically managed using process control systems. Example processing facilities include manufacturing plants, chemical plants, crude oil refineries, and ore processing plants. Among other things, process control systems often manage the use of industrial equipment in the processing facilities.
Various process industries have seen constant growth in automation technology. However, it is often challenging to integrate native and custom application components into a single control system. This can be due to a number of factors, such as difficulty in maintaining a sequence of calculations or rules to be evaluated during the control of a processing facility. This becomes even more problematic when dealing with a large number of applications having an even larger number of calculations or rules.